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Egyptian revolutionary socialist: ‘We are facing a counterrevolution’

Rana Nessim and Rosemary Bechler interviewed Sameh
Naguib (pictured above), a leading member of the Revolutionary Socialists in Egypt, on
October 24, 2013. The interview was published on the openDemocracy website on
November 8. Nessim is associate editor for openDemocracy's Arab Awakening page. Bechler is editor of openDemocracy. Links International Journal of
Socialist Renewalhas added subheads and abridged
the interview for reasons of space. The full text is available at HERE.

Rosemary Bechler: Well a lot has happened
since the last time we met, Sameh. How have you been and what is life like for
the Revolutionary Socialists in Egypt?

Sameh Naguib: It is more difficult than any of us can ever remember, and one of the most
difficult aspects is the fact that the majority of left wing and liberal
intellectuals are completely in support of Egypt’s military leadership, 100 per
cent.

RB:
This is a rather strange definition of left liberals, isn’t it?

It’s a very strange definition. People who claim to
be on the left… and I am not only talking about organised groups like the
communist party – I am talking about writers and novelists, like Sonallah
Ibrahim – intellectuals, major poets, well-known figures with a long history of
democratic struggle, and standing up for people’s rights and so forth. Across
the spectrum, they are all singing for the general [General El Sisi, the
military ruler] on the same song sheet.

RB: A
shift that has occurred practically overnight would you say?

Overnight.

RB: We
need to talk about the role of the media campaign in this shift in the
political climate. We are not just talking about intellectuals are we – this
campaign has won over large sections of the Egyptian people?

They’ve persuaded a large part, but it is a very
complicated picture. It is not that everybody is on board. However if today we
tried to organise a demonstration, we would soon be attacked by organised thugs
who take only five or ten minutes to show up, wherever we try.

RB: Do
ordinary people also react against protests?

There’s a kind of varied reaction among ordinary
people. There is fear, “We don’t want any more of this: this is too dangerous.”
Others say, “Enough, stop doing this. Let the military sort this out. We’ve had
enough of all this”. There is a reluctant kind of support on the part of some bystanders.
But today, outside the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is only seasoned
activists who actually venture out to protest.

Muslim Brotherhood

RB: So
what about your relations with supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood?

Again, this is very complicated. We don’t go on
their demonstrations: we can’t do that. Not only because of the extreme
repression but also because of the sectarian nature of many of the Brotherhood
slogans and the fact that they continue to call for the return of Morsi as
president, which we are against.

RB: As
it is, the regime are peeling off the first and second ranks of the Muslim
Brotherhood and taking them all into custody?

The Muslim Brotherhood can survive that; they are
huge enough and have enough depth to take these kinds of attacks. But we are
not. If what survives of the organised left were hit in this fashion, we would
be gone for years to come. So, the positions we take are popular enough
with the Muslim Brotherhood youth. You can see that from their Facebook
comments and so on. But as you might imagine, they always ask us, “Why aren’t
you with us on the streets?” And at the same time, on the other side, all
the people who support the military accuse us of being part of “the Muslim
Brotherhood conspiracy”. So, ours is a very isolating, indeed lonely kind of
experience. We’re attacked on all sides. The Muslim Brotherhood youth want us
to be on the streets with them while others are accusing us of being Muslim
Brotherhood supporters. And it is extremely difficult to maintain an
independent line and to keep people active in the struggle.

RB:
Does this also apply to the independent trade union movement? Are they
similarly divided between those two constituencies?

Of course. Their main leader is a minister now, and
one of the staunchest supporters of the military regime. And that’s a huge blow
to any independent trade union organisation.

Well, that’s the really sad thing. This was a
serious, independent trade union movement born out of strike committees in mass
strikes, in which Abou Eita was one of the foremost leaders of the struggle.
And that really shows you the measure of the enormity of the betrayal that has
taken place in Egypt.

RB:
So, are there any constituencies out there with which to rebuild some kind of
coalition?

When you look at it from outside, at first sight it
looks as if all there is is a sea of Sisi supporters. And that’s it. But among
those who are supporters of Sisi, a closer look shows you people who have very
contradictory consciousness and reasons, let alone all the expectations. And
the first thing to say is that these expectations are not being met. We
are four months into this coup, and there is no revival of tourism in Egypt.
The railway network has been shut down for the first time in its 150-year
history since the British built the network, so that this year on the feast
holidays – like Christmas holidays – there were no trains to take people home. This
has caused a huge amount of suffering and chaos for ordinary people. You have
over 3 million people commuting every day by rail to Cairo for their jobs from
Banha or Tanta and all the small delta towns, as you have in any major city.
These people have to pay triple, maybe four times the amount of the normal
fares and it takes at least twice as long using microbuses and other private
means of transportation to get to their jobs. So you can imagine, this will
eventually erode the high level of support people once gave to their new
‘saviours’.

RB:
But maybe what is interesting about this is that had this happened under
Morsi’s presidency, there would have been an absolute outcry against the Muslim
Brotherhood. But under Sisi, people actually don’t respond in exactly the same
way?

No, they’ve given the military the benefit of the
doubt. And this is where we must come back to the military and its media
outlets, which have launched the most massive campaign, comparing El Sisi to
Nasser, talking incessantly about the nationalist role of the army; the modernising
role of the army; the centrality of the army.

RB: Is
this true of all the media outlets, public and private?

All of them. Because they shut down all the Islamic
media outlets and there is no independent press.

RB:
Again that is an extraordinary feat – I mean the military manoeuvre in politics
that has got everyone “singing from one sheet”.

It is an extraordinary feat, but I don’t think it’s
sustainable. [...] Sisi wants to keep power but he wants it to be
constitutional. He wants it to be set in stone: above all he doesn’t want to be
challenged. He’s just carried out the worst massacres in modern Egyptian
history and he wants to make sure that he doesn’t pay for that.

RB: On
that subject, how much information has got out about the massacres in the
sit-ins? Is it now widely known?

Yes, it’s widely known now, but for some time the
police and the army kept up the claim that the Muslim Brotherhood set fire to
their own people and that they were heavily armed. That, with time, turns out
not to be true. Clearly not true. Even the health ministry says that over a
thousand died that day on August 14. The Muslim Brotherhood are claiming over 6000.
It’s probably somewhere in between.

RB:
Have the human rights organisations been very involved in this?

Very involved, especially trying to create lists of
the names and ages of the people. According to the main human rights organisations,
there are still 400 people missing from that day. They don’t know where they
are. There are lots of burnt, unidentifiable bodies. And the independent human
rights organisations that have nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood also
claim much higher numbers of deaths than those maintained by the health
ministry.

But certainly in terms of the media, the whole
episode was played down, and the release of information has been very
controlled. On Egyptian television, whether on the private or the public
networks, what you get are these pictures of them finding weapons in huge boxes
and so on in Rabaa El Adawiya. The obvious question is, so why weren’t they
using them? I mean they have the weapons and they are being mass slaughtered…
But that is not the question that gets asked.

RB:
Why wouldn’t they defend themselves?

Yes. Why would you find the weapons in a box
somewhere? And the numbers also tell the same story. I mean, 40 something
police officers in both major attacks were killed, but there were over 1000
dead on the other side. That’s not a confrontation between two armies or armed
groups. [...]

Orientalism, Islamophobia and ‘secularism’

RB: (…
) What does it mean for leftists, liberals, pluralists of any kind to support
this coup? Aren’t they simply calling for a return of a certain kind of
Nasserist or Kemalist notion of the nation as one monocultural, “National Us”?
Doesn’t this suggest that the majority, even the intellectuals, can’t finally
think beyond that tradition?

No, that is a kind of Orientalist reaction to
recent events. There’s no ingrained stance against pluralism. But there is, and
this is in the west to the same extent, Islamophobia amongst secular
intellectuals. So, for them the idea that anything is close to an Islamic State
or an Islamic system, is something they’re prepared to ally themselves with the
devil to get rid of. And you have this in Turkey as well, of course, where a
segment of the secular opposition, including the so-called leftists, will
always stand with the military against the Islamic forces. It doesn’t make any
difference to them how democratic the means were that brought the Islamists to
power.

RB:
And the same in Tunisia, you think?

And the same in Tunisia. But the difference is
this. At the time of Atatürk and the time of Nasser, there was a major reform
program under way with major concessions; major economic concessions and social
concessions and concessions to women and so on … that made it possible for
people to accept that monocultural or mono-political kind of structure. These
were different times. Now there is no space at all for an Atatürk or Nasserite
reforming project; El Sisi has nothing to offer. There are no land reforms or
major nationalisations or major struggles against colonialist forces waiting in
the wings; there’s nothing there to create enough popular support. And the
thing is, in a country like Egypt, we don’t even have the political parties who
could represent this kind of project.

RB:
So, how do the secular intellectuals react to something like Sisi sending back
the secular clause in the constitution?

They say it’s wrong and some of them say El Sisi
should not be president. Others say he has to be president. They’re divided on
it and these divisions with time are becoming sharper and more
visible. And this is creating a new kind of hope, a new space for
manouevre, because particularly during the first weeks after the massacre, it
was just anybody who opens his mouth against El Sisi or begins to question what
was happening, was a traitor, and should be killed… If you spoke up in a coffee
shop, you’d be beaten up quite severely. That has changed. Again, this is
not the first time in this Egyptian revolutionary process. People just take a
position: then they start to think. Now in coffee shops and on the streets there
are arguments with one person supporting El Sisi and other people saying, “Now
it’s too much. Till when will there be a curfew and the state of emergency?… We
can’t get back to work. They haven’t done anything, the government is weak,
they’re not providing us with anything.” It’s starting all over again; people
even questioning their own choices, including questioning their early ready
support for El Sisi.

RB:
When we last spoke you anticipated this, saying that in the last analysis, the
bottom line is that the revolutionary demands have not been met in any way. Are
you still of that mind?

Yes – because many people supported Sisi not
because they were fascists or ultra secularists, but simply because they
thought – “OK, the Muslim Brotherhood didn’t deliver on our demands. Maybe,
maybe this military will.” There are, of course, sections of the middle class
who support Sisi purely because they hate the revolution; they hate the chaos
of the revolution. They hate the idea that everybody is suddenly demanding a
life, and that the poor, whenever they have a demand, take it upon themselves
to go out onto the streets and demonstrate. They hate this. They might have
wanted some change at the top, but without all this – revolution. So you have
that kind of solid support for El Sisi, but that’s mainly a middle and upper
class support. Their criticism of El Sisi now, crazy as it might sound, is that
he is not being hard enough. I mean over fifteen thousand in jail, tens of
thousands – nobody knows the numbers – of people injured, at least two to three
thousand killed and that’s not a hard enough clampdown for them. They want
everything cleaned up and back to normal at whatever cost. [...]

Rampant racism and xenophobia

RB:
How about minorities and how they are being treated now? We run a regular blog
review called “Egypt in the balance”, and the pattern is quite clear: there is
an extraordinary upsurge in racism and xenophobia; in anti-Copt, anti-foreigner,
anti-Palestinian and the treatment of Syrian refugees. Where does this come
from?

There’s a fear campaign; a media fear campaign
saying that the Syrians and the Palestinians are all part of a plot to de-stabilise
Egypt, to kill Egyptians and so on… It has happened in Europe too at certain
moments in history ... to create enough paranoia in Egyptians so that they
begin to feel that Syrians, or anybody who has paler skin and who might be a
Syrian, might be planting a bomb somewhere. Yes, there’s this very
powerful conspiracy theory being put forward. The Americans are involved, the
Europeans are involved, the Israelis are involved, the Syrians are involved,
the Palestinians are involved, the Qataris are involved … you know this big
international plot to dismember Egypt, and to have a kind of Syrian scenario in
Egypt, to dismantle the state and to tear it apart.

RB: Is
the Iraqi scenario cited?

Yes. And that’s been a central message from the
army, "We’re the only army that is still united. That’s still standing on
its feet. The Syrian army’s disintegrated; the Iraqi army’s disintegrated.
Libya is in a mess.” And once again this message is directed to the Egyptian people
in the first instance, “Do you really want to be like Iraq or Syria? If you
stand against the Egyptian state, the Egyptian army, the Egyptian security
apparatus, then you are pushing the country in that direction.” That
immediately instigates a kind of backlash within the middle classes against
anybody demonstrating or going on strike … “You’re just helping the terrorists,
the people that want to dismember this country.” So xenophobia is put to good
use in that way.

RB:
Then there is the Sinai operation, playing a similar role, maybe to the
terrorist plot which has erupted in the Tunisian mountainous border region.
This can all be grist to that mill?

Of course, to have a war is the most convenient way
to keep people silent. Over the years, they have created a very strong enmity
in the people of Sinai against the Egyptian state. Now they’ve widened the base
of popular resistance. The Egyptian state has always been terrible at Sinai
people’s rights, and now they have nurtured this hatred tremendously by sending
the tanks in and killing loads of civilians who had nothing to do with armed
groups. So, they are sending more and more people into the armed groups who are
actually doing the fighting. And the interesting thing is that after four
months the army is unable to control the situation in Sinai. It’s not simply
that they’re making a showcase out of the war: they are losing there. Their army
personnel carriers (APCs) are being attacked. But Israel has given the
army all rights of passage in Sinai. And the army has given the Israelis the
best present in return; they have destroyed 90% of the tunnels to Gaza, choking
off Gaza and its economy nearly completely.

RB:
And in Egypt – this has been met with equanimity?

With extreme anti-Palestinian fervour. And you can
imagine the troubles the Palestinian refugees in Egypt are facing with this
campaign. Syrian families being thrown in jails; dying all over the place,
including children and women, just because they’re Syrians. There is no
doubt about it. A counterrevolution is a miserable business for very many
involved. And we are facing a counterrevolution.

RB: It
seems extraordinary that the Copts are supporting Sisi …

You must of course realise that the Islamic
movement in general, whether the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafists, are
sectarian when it comes to other religions. Their agenda is an Islamist agenda,
and part of their program is to make Copts into second-class citizens. I mean
even the most moderate part of the Muslim Brotherhood would say that a Copt
can’t become president, for example. And that’s the most moderate. You
have a whole range of people at the other end of the spectrum who want to close
down churches and basically want the Copts to leave the country. So, the myth
of the nationalist army and state that is secular, that protects the unity of
Muslims and Christians alike becomes a very useful one. And that is the kind of
help that the Islamists gave directly to the military; simply by being so
narrowly sectarian.

The thing is, the more the Muslim Brotherhood were
under attack, the more they used an Islamist harder line to win the Salafists
over to their side. But of course, that meant pushing the Copts in the other
direction. Any alliance with the extreme Salafists, and I am talking about the
Islamic Gama’a – extreme Salafists – means that churches are going to be
attacked, Copts will be attacked in the streets and the Muslim Brotherhood
understood very well that this would happen. What the army did was again
very clever. In not protecting the churches, they let it happen, “Let the Copts
come running to us.” And they have and you can understand their fears
especially in the south; churches, shops and houses are being burnt down.

What the Revolutionary Socialists are doing

Rana
Nessim: Would it be best for we Egyptians to have General Sisi as president and
hope that he will receive the same kind of exposure as Morsi? What do we have
to lose, since he is going to be no more able to fulfil the demands of the
revolution for “bread, freedom and social justice”?

Ideally, you would at least have some candidate for
the leadership who hasn’t sold out to the military but who is also not an
Islamist. We don’t want to repeat that scenario again. Even if that candidate
got a very small percentage of the votes, that must be the way to maintain an
opposition movement in some kind of momentum. That’s why we’ve been working
with the Way of the Revolution Front, which basically has the small minority
position of trying to create an independent third voice in this situation.
Ahdaf El Soueif and several other major figures are in this front. It includes
organisations like the April 6th Movement, the Revolutionary Socialists,
parts of Strong Egypt (Masr el Qaweya) -- which is partly and especially among
some of its youth, an ex-Islamist/leftist group -- and independent trade union
youth activists, anarchists, all kinds of people as individuals. There are very
few intellectuals; the remaining intellectuals who have not sold out to the
military.

The front is based on individuals not on organisations,
and we are making a real attempt to ensure that the organised groups don’t
dominate the front through any blocs – we want to make it as open as possible
for people to join and influence and lots of people are joining. They will
contest any military candidates and are already contesting the military trials
of civilians, as well as the new draconian laws they want to put in governing
protest in Egypt.

These are amazing laws that make it nearly
impossible to hold a demonstration and that give the police the right, at the
end of the day, to shoot live ammunition at demonstrators. Ahdaf Soueif is
taking a very courageous and strong stand on things and she’s being attacked
like there’s no tomorrow. The front is being attacked for being a front for the
Muslim Brotherhood, an attempt to dismantle the state and dismantle the
military, a front of the Revolutionary Socialists who are a bunch of mad people
who want to burn down the country. And this is an organised campaign by both
public and private media.

So, it’s too early to tell what will happen in
elections. We still don’t know what kind of system they’re going to come up
with in the constitution. We have made a beginning by contesting them on the
legality of this constitution; and the show that they’re putting on there. But
yes, you’d have to contest these people every single step of the way. We
need to be clear. The Egyptian revolution has received its worst blow since it
began. This is very serious. The Muslim Brotherhood turned out to be a complete
disaster. Many people voted in Morsi because they didn’t want Shafik, but you
also had 4 million people, nearly 5 million people, who voted for Hamdeen
Sabahi, who seemed to most people to be a secular, leftist alternative. He’s
now turned out to be a pro-military fascist. That’s a demoralising fact for all
these millions who have no idea who they should support now. The so-called
secular left that some people thought might be their Nasserists are all backing
El Sisi, so it’s a very difficult situation. But this whole democratic
movement from 2005 onwards started with a very small minority of people
standing in front of the Journalists’ and Lawyers’ Syndicate and, were
eventually able to win considerable support. So, we have to start again.

RN: Obviously the opposition is
completely divided at the moment, a gap that the Way of the Revolution Front is
trying hard to bridge. But where do the Muslim Brotherhood fit into this?
They’re continuing with all their demonstrations, while most of their
leadership is behind bars. Obviously they avoid demonstrating in main squares
for their own safety, but what’s their plan? What lessons have they learned?
It’s clear they don’t want to go into negotiations and at the same time the
opposition can’t stand with them, because as you said, it’s too dangerous. So
what’s next for them?

First of all, it’s not only a question of the danger
involved. It’s also about them having a sectarian, right-wing agenda. You can’t
just go and demonstrate with people under these slogans. What they are
demanding is the return of Morsi. We were in the demonstrations against Morsi:
we don’t want a return. For us, this is a coup against the revolution and its
demands. For them it is just a coup against a legitimately elected Morsi, and
there is a difference between these. There was a real mass movement against
Morsi. It wasn’t just the demonstrations; it was also the strikes. But at the
same time as you had this mass movement against Morsi, you also had generals
conspiring to exploit the scene to get rid of Morsi and turn the clock back on
the revolution.

As for the disenfranchised Morsi supporters, the
severity of the oppression they have faced obviously unites people. You’re
talking about a leadership in jail and thousands killed, so no, you won’t find
much internal contestation. There are of course questions, all kinds of
questions being put forward.

For example the Revolutionary Socialists argued
consistently that unless you dismantled the state, the revolution would be
defeated, to which they answered that this was a betrayal of the state and that
the military has to be united, “What are you talking about dismantling the state?
We don’t want to dismantle the state.” They were very critical of us and even
tried to prosecute us for saying it. But now a lot of the younger Muslim Brotherhood
voices are saying, “No, you’re right. The state has crushed us and we let them,
because we didn’t attempt to dismantle it.” To what extent that is
representative of a wider group of individuals, I don’t know. Will the question
arise that the Muslim Brotherhood made a big mistake in allying itself with the
military and with the police? I am sure. It’s just logical; that question must
arise. They kept praising El Sisi, the generals and the police who promptly
crushed them. Something is definitely wrong with that plan. But right now,
of course, no one is going to break ranks under these circumstances.

RN:
What role, if any, will the Muslim Brotherhood play in the next elections?

Right now what they’re trying to do is gain
concessions from the military to get the leadership out of jail at least and to
have some kind of space to move. Morsi is meant to be going on trial on
November 4. But just one telephone call and it can be postponed for another few
months. That’s just another part of the show, because everything depends on
what happens with the negotiations. The Muslim Brotherhood knows that the
country can’t continue without railway networks, and so forth – that’s
unsustainable. What they are telling the membership is, “Patience. Lets keep
the pressure on” – knowing that this system can’t continue as it is, and that
something is going to have to give. This is the kind of pressure that creates
more differences among the generals, “Maybe we should talk to them? Maybe we
should get a few of them out of jail?”

They’ll have to give in eventually if the Muslim
Brotherhood can maintain this day-in day-out pressure: they’ll eventually have
to make concessions.

Among the military there are two different
strategies; one is to say, “We have to negotiate and reach some kind of
settlement. Let’s see. Let’s experiment with talks.”

There are two leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood who
are not in jail and they’re openly speaking to the media and so on… They’ve
left them as a kind of possible door to negotiation. All attempts to
negotiations have failed until now, but I think eventually they will come to
some kind of an arrangement.

As for banning the Muslim Brotherhood as a
political entity, of course it was banned before. But they are part of Egyptian
society. This is an organisation that has over a million cadres, what are you
going to do? Put them all in jail? What about the 10 million that support them?
They’ve been around for over 80 years and are not going to disappear. The idea
of political Islam is not going to disappear. It didn’t work anywhere, not even
in Turkey after all their attempts. You have this huge Atatürk project, and one
hundred years later the Islamists are still around and the idea of Islam is
still strong and is not going away.

Take the football supporters, the “Ultras” who not
only participated in the uprisings, but who were at the forefront of the
revolution and still are. Their movement is being crushed again. Just as the
Ultras won't go away, and they shouldn't, the Muslim Brotherhood won't go away
either. For example, if the secular leftists or the Ultras or any other group
attempt to reclaim Tahrir Square, don't you think the youth of the Muslim
Brotherhood would rush to join? Like the uprising in 2011, their leadership
didn't participate from the beginning, but the youth were there. These
demonstrations are vigorous and supported by thousands of men and women – people
who belong to the debate about Egypt's future.

RN:
Now they’re going to release the draft of the new constitution and then
there’ll be a referendum supposedly and elections will follow. Will everyone
participate? Or will it be like before, when many people decided not to
participate because they say the election is rigged and people don’t trust the
process – the military is in charge and they won’t allow international
monitoring?

I think it’s too early to tell in terms of
elections, whether boycotting would make any sense or not. I don’t think it
will. In this particular situation, the opposition will have to take part
because of all the disenfranchised people, because of the people who will be in
a mess at that point; where are they going to go? If we don’t vote, “What are
you saying? What are you telling us? It’s all over?” So, that’s dangerous and
in that sense probably the opposition will have to participate. Again it
depends on what happens. If it’s going to be tanks in front of every polling
station and the thugs out in force, we might have to think again. It depends
how bad it’s going to be.

RB:
So, do you need the world’s eyes on Egypt during this process?

Well, that is a double-edged sword. On the one
hand, yes of course. There has to be as much international solidarity from
supporters of the Egyptian revolutions as possible. But again, that is being
used to make frenzied claims about foreign conspiracies and plots to destroy
the state and so on. The most important thing to remember is that if we
become demoralised, we’re helping them to win outright, and they haven’t won
yet. But this is one of the main things that we have to overcome; the feeling
that the revolution is over.

And the symbolism of the whole thing has never been
so clear. Tahrir Square has become a graveyard. It has become a garage for
tanks basically. People, and this was worldwide, saw Tahrir as a symbol of
revolution, change, of democracy. For that hope to turn into a huge garage with
dozens and dozens of tanks, armoured vehicles, walls and barbed wire and
completely empty of any people is to say the least, demoralising.

But that only means that we have to retake Tahrir.

We’re at that crossroads now, where there is
nothing to be done except to retake Tahrir Square. The only way to revive the
Egyptian revolution is to reclaim it. The coming battle will be all about
reclaiming that Square and that’s why the Muslim Brotherhood tried to reclaim
it on October 6. That is why the army shot to kill that day and they killed
over 50 people just for trying peacefully to march towards Tahrir Square. The
army knows that if they lose that square, they’re in trouble again. And
everybody in the Muslim Brotherhood and everybody on the left, knows that
without regaining that square … we’re in serious trouble.

So, there’s a battle over spaces and a battle over
dates. In terms of spaces, obviously Tahrir Square and its symbolism, Rabaa El
Adaweya with its symbolism, for the Islamists, has become a central motif,
along with the whole idea of the number four and the yellow colour. Rabaa El
Adawiya has become a major symbolic space. Then there is time, so days and
dates: November 19 – the Mohamed Mahmoud massacre; this will be a major battle
in front of the Ministry of Interior. January 25, what’s that going to be like
next year? Is this going to be a celebration of the police and military with
jets flying above? What will the space of Tahrir look like on that date?

RB:
Are the graffiti people at work? Is all that still going on?

Yes, there’s a huge battle over the graffiti;
mainly between the Muslim Brotherhood and the pro-military forces who paint
over it every day … every day … every day. They paint and repaint … battles and
battles through the night and every morning. You can see all this: “Sisi is a
murderer... Sisi is a killer… Sisi out”, and so on. Then it’s painted over,
completely. Within hours, again it comes back.

So, in a sense the revolution is continuing. It’s
taking this special form of a symbolic battle between the Islamists and the
army, but it means that the revolutionary energy is still out there, fighting
over the simplest things, like graffiti and “who owns these walls?”.